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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
IRAQ: UN to carry out safety inspection
BAGHDAD, 7 October 2003 (IRIN) - A United Nations assessment team will arrive in Iraq this week to assess the safety of remaining staff there, the officer in charge of the UN's Iraq mission, Kevin Kennedy, announced over the weekend.
According to Kennedy, the group will examine the events surrounding a suicide truck bomb attack on 19 August that killed 23 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations Special Envoy to Iraq.
“How well they’re going to be able to do that in a few days, I don’t know,” he told IRIN in Baghdad.
A suicide car bomb in September at the entrance to the parking lot used by Iraq employees killed two security guards and injured another seven. Investigators, including the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have not released information about either attack. Dirt barriers three metres feet high now separate the entrance to the UN compound from the road. The parking lot has been moved another 500 metres or so down the street.
"We’re very concerned about the security situation here,” Kennedy asserted. “I think they’re targeting everybody. Anybody trying to better the situation in Iraq is liable to be attacked”.
Most international staff working for the UN are in the Jordanian capital, Amman at the moment and many administrative staff have also been moved to Cyprus, following instructions from the UN-Secretary General Kofi Annan to scale back. Some are travelling in and out of the country on a daily basis. However, around 1,000 local staff remain maintaining programme activity in essential areas.
Staff in Iraq are currently only carrying out essential humanitarian programmes, including food distribution and helping farmers with crops. International staff have also left the northern city of Sulaymaniyah and are now down to less than 20 in Arbil, both large cities with large UN programmes in the north. Northern Iraq, under Kurdish control for the last 10 years, is often seen as more friendly toward coalition forces and humanitarian groups.
The largest UN initiative in Iraq, the Oil-for-Food programme, which operated for more than 10 years under the former Saddam Hussein regime, will be handed over to the US-led administration in Iraq in November, Kennedy said.
Created to counteract international sanctions imposed on the country, the programme allowed the ousted president to sell some of the country’s vast oil resources to pay for food, electricity and other humanitarian items.
Meanwhile, many NGOs have scaled back their operations and even pulled out following security concerns, while others are continuing. For example, Intersos, an Italian NGO, is continuing to distribute food and fix up health centres, said Magda Bellu, the group’s head of mission. It also is working with the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) on “child friendly space” programmes.
However, there are some problems due to lack of international staff. "Our repatriation programme to bring Iraq refugees in Iran back home is on hold at the moment because workers at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, office in Baghdad, are currently in Jordan," Bellu told IRIN.
“We were expecting 11,000 refugees from Iran (so) the re-allocation of international staff is slowing down the work,” Bellu explained. “Legal, voluntary returns will be supported by UNHCR, which should deal with the Iranian government and the authorities.”
The US based, CARE International NGO, which specialises in food distribution, is also continuing work in the country. "The group is keeping a low profile, but it’s “business as usual,” an aid worker from the NGO told IRIN. Medicines Sans Frontiers, (MSF) a medical aid group, along with Mercy Corps are also doing their best to continue. “We work with them on a daily basis,” Veronique Taveau, a spokeswoman for the United Nations in Iraq told IRIN. “We help them and they help us,” she added.
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003
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